“It is about Master Francis,” she said, smoothing the folds of her gown.
“I thought so,” said I to myself. She was a verbose old woman, who liked hearing herself talk, so she took some time to tell her story; but I will condense it, and merely relate the main points.
During my absence Frank had behaved well, and given no trouble until that morning, when he had taken it into his head to make a raid upon the store-room and help himself to jam and various other good things. The store-room maid, who had charge of, and was responsible for the things, happening to see the young marauder, remonstrated with him, and told him to leave the room; but he refused to do so, and on her attempting to put him out, he lost his temper, struck her thrice in the face, and pulled down her hair. The woman, who had been somewhat hurt, and a good deal frightened by Frank’s violence, ran crying to the housekeeper, and complained. Frank had been sorry for what he had done, and had apologized to the woman; but she had insisted upon my being told, and so the old lady had been obliged to report the affair to me.
I was much vexed on hearing of his ungentlemanly conduct, and I felt very angry with him. He deserved a flogging, and I meant to give him one. I went to the library, after giving orders that Frank was to be sent to me as soon as he returned to the house.
In about half-an-hour he came into the room and greeted me quietly, but he looked as if he were rather ashamed of himself. He was pale and nervous, and he kept his eyes cast down.
I said: “Frank, I am very sorry to hear how badly you behaved this morning. I should not have taken notice of your pilfering things from the store-room, though that was a contemptible act for a boy of your age: but I am grieved to think that you should have so far forgotten yourself as to strike Jane. It was cowardly and ungentlemanly. I did not think you could have done such a thing. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I intend to punish you severely. Prepare yourself at once,” I added, getting out the rod. He glanced at it with a look of fear, and a hot flush rose to his cheeks.
“I am ashamed, and very sorry for what I have done. I expected to be punished,” he said in a low voice, his eyes filling with tears, and his lips trembling. Then, without another word, he let down his trousers, and placed himself in position across the end of the sofa.
I rucked his shirt up and began to apply the rod, and as I was angry with him, I laid on the cuts smartly, raising long, red weals all over the surface of his white bottom. He wriggled, writhed, and cried as the stinging strokes of the birch fell with a swishing sound on his plump, firm flesh, striping the skin in all directions; but I went on flogging him, till at last he could no longer suppress his cries, and he began to scream in a shrill tone, at the same time putting both his hands over his bottom. I seized his wrists and held them with my left hand, while I continued to apply the rod with a little more force, extorting from him louder screams, as well as piteous appeals for mercy and entreaties to me not to flog him so hard. He drew up his legs one after the other and then kicked them cut again, he jerked his hips from side to side, and rolled about in pain, half turning over on to his side for a moment, so that I saw the front part of his naked body. And what I saw paralyzed me with astonishment, causing my uplifted arm to drop to my side, and the rod to slip from my grasp. In that momentary glimpse, I had caught sight of a little pint-lipped cunt, shaded at the upper part with a slight growth of curly, golden down.
This most astounding and totally unexpected discovery made my brain whirl, and for a moment I stood utterly confounded,
As the cuts of the rod were no longer falling on her red, striped, quivering bottom, she had ceased struggling, and lay on the sofa wailing piteously.
I took a long look at the half-naked body lying before me, and I was amazed that I had not discovered her sex on the day I had first seen her figure exposed; for the broad hips, the swelling curves of the plump bottom, and the rounded thighs, were those of a fairly well-developed girl about fourteen or fifteen years of age. And as I realized the fact that I had just been birching, and that I was at that moment looking at the naked bottom and thighs of a young female, I got a most tremendous cockstand. What a sensitive thing is the sexual feeling, and how quickly it is excited!
But while all these various thoughts and sensations were passing through my mind, the girl was lying sobbing on the sofa, and I had to decide as to the course I should take with regard to her. I did not hesitate, but at once resolved not to let her know that I had noticed anything; and I felt pretty sure that she had been in too great pain during the flogging, to be aware that she had revealed her sex in her contortions.
I now told her that she might rise from the sofa; and she struggled to her feet, and slowly adjusted her dress; her whole body shaking with sobs, the tears streaming down her scarlet cheeks, and her lips quivering.
She had received a severe birching, and her bottom must have been smarting and throbbing most painfully. I pitied her, because she was a girl, but I should not have pitied a boy who had received an equally severe flogging for the same offence. At that moment, as she stood before me in her male attire, with short cut hair, it was astonishing how boy-like she was in appearance; she looked just, like a lad about thirteen years of age. I felt very much inclined to laugh, but that would never have done; if I had even smiled she would have known that her secret had been found out; so I kept a stern countenance, and addressed her in a cold, hard voice, saying: “Now, Frank, you may go. You have had a severe flogging, but you deserved it. I hope you will never be so ungentlemanly as to strike a woman again.”
She wiped her eyes, from which the big tears were still slowly trickling, and walked stiffly out of the room, in perfect ignorance of the fact that her true sex had been discovered.
When the door had closed behind her, I felt rather relieved; for the startling discovery had been so sudden, that it had somewhat bewildered me, and I wanted to be alone, so that I might collect my ideas, and settle upon what I should do with the girl in future. I can always think best while smoking, so I lit a cigar, and took a seat in a comfortable arm-chair. Then I thought over everything that had happened since “Frank”-as I still called her in my mind-had become an inmate of my house; and in the light of the knowledge I had just acquired, I understood the meaning of many things which had puzzled me at the time they had occurred. It was perfectly clear to me now why “Frank” had been so confused when I laughed at “him” for submitting to be spanked by a lady: and I could well understand why she was ashamed to let down her trousers before me; why she was so shy with me after I had flogged her; and why she had always blushed on the slightest provocation. I was also able to account for her curious behaviour some time previously, when she had been so queer and wayward, alternately lively and depressed, and so liable to fits of anger. No doubt this state of nervous excitement had. been owing to her having come to puberty, and been unwell with her courses for the first time. I wondered how she had managed to hide all the tell-tale signs from the eyes of the female servants, who are generally so quick to find out anything of that sort. Bat she had undoubtedly contrived to conceal her sex, and I was convinced that no one in the house but myself knew her secret.